From the time mankind developed writing – and was able to store his memories externally – to the World Wide Web – at which point all his experiences, no matter how innocuous or imaginary, became communal – communications took on ever more importance on Old Earth. The same holds true on this planet. Using the traditional model of communications, civil research on this planet has focused on improving the speed of transmission, lessening “noise,” and ease of access. By contrast, military communications here have been focused on command and control, interception and disruption, and security. Colonial officers unwilling to trust autonomous computers for defense turned to communications engineers. These devised new methods utilizing the planet’s electromagnetic and geological peculiarities to improve their preferred “mechanical comms” through advances such as tropospheric scatter, interoperable net-centric systems, acquisition guidance, and seismic communications.